Japan (11) - more food and Japanese toiletexperience

Last night we had sukiyaki for dinner. You can check the link for more info if you don't know what sukiyaki is. The main ingredient is beef, but very thin sliced and very tender and soft. The cows that are used for sukiyaki beef get special treatment and food. This treatment includes massages and lots of beer in the cows diet. This result in a very soft, tender yummy beef that is hard to get outside Japan.

Sukiyaki is prepared in one pan on the table. Everybody prepares his own meat and vegetables and sip them in a small cup with raw egg before eating. Not everybody like to use the raw egg, but it's also okay to eat your own prepared meat and vegetables with rice. At least one time during our visit we eat sukiyaki. It's one of my favorite Japanese dishes. Below you can check some of the pics from last night.

Although not planned I bought a small compact digital camera yesterday afternoon. Noriko and I were at Yamada, a chain of electronic stores. While we were looking around we saw some very cheap priced compact digital cameras. I was looking for a technical good and not too expensive camera for quite some time. My current camera (Nikon Coolpix 5700) is a good camera, but it's a little too big to take with me in the pocket of my jacket. This new camera (a Nikon Coolpix P2) will be used for snapshot purposes. I only wanted to buy a camera here if the price difference was big enough with Holland. It was. Some models were on sale and they gave some extra discount. In Euros I paid between 165 and 170 Euro while the average price in Holland is between 335 and 390 Euro for the same model. A huge difference in my opinion. Noriko also bought a small digital camera because her old one is in bad condition.

It's a pretty advanced camera. It's good for point and shoot, but there are also enough manual settings for the more creative photographer. The sukiyaki pics were shot with the new camera.

Finally something about Japanese toilets. There are two types, the old Japanese squat toilets (a modern hole in the ground) and the high-tech toilets with the latest in electronic convenience. Check this link to watch a short funny animation how to use the Japanese squat toilet (requires Flash). The same site also provide a toiletmap of Tokyo with the dirtiest and most clean toilets.

Here, here, here and here you can find sometimes funny info/articles about the high-tech toilets. The pics below show the toilet at Noriko's mother's house. It has a warmed toiletseat, bidet, a bottom washer function, some nozzle that sprays water against your bottom with quite some power. Some even more advanced model toiletseats also provide a blowdryer to blowdry your bottom after you used the bottom washer function.

It was very funny the first time I was confronted with these high-tech toilets. Now I'm quite used to it. I must admit it's very convenient and very hygienic.

Here are the pics.

This is how it looks from above.

This is the controlpanel. with the first two buttons you can arrange the temperature of the toiletseat. The second button is the bidet-function. The third one is the bottom washer function. This symbol speaks for itself I guess. And the last button is for stopping the bidet- and bottom-washer funtion.This is the overall look. The water reservoir on the right is also the sink where you can wash your hand after flushing and where the waterreservoir is filled.

Maybe it's a guy's subject, but I thought it was fun enough to share with you.